1. Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure relates generally to a manifest, methods and systems for the filling of a multi-dose medicament order.
2. Background Description
Multi-dose medicament containers, such as multi-dose blister containers or multi-dose rolls of pouches, are commonly known in the art. A multi-dose medicament container may contain the medicaments from a set of prescriptions of a multi-dose medicament order for a patient, with the medicaments packaged into a configuration or fill pattern that is convenient and useful for the patient. For example, a blister of a multi-dose blister pack may contain a set of units of medicaments from a set of patient's prescriptions that are to be ingested each morning. A second blister may contain a different set of units of medicaments that are to be ingested at noon, and a third blister may contain a yet different set of units of medicaments to be ingested at night. This combination of three types of blister fills may be repeated for every day of a week, and a multi-dose blister pack may contain a week's worth of medicaments and be labeled for a specific week. A patient may easily separate an individual blister for a particular time of ingestion of a particular day of a particular week, and have the correct, portable set of medicament units for ingestion.
In another example, a similar configuration may be implemented using multi-dose rolls of pouches, where a roll may contain a week's worth of medicaments divided into multiple pouches, with each day's medicaments contained in a single pouch. A patient may easily separate an individual pouch to have the correct, portable set of medicament units for ingestion.
Of course, as commonly known, the configuration or multi-dose fill pattern of a multi-dose medicament container is not limited to packaging by a time period of ingestion. Other fill patterns are also possible and known in the art. Independent of a specific fill pattern, however, the fill process of a multi-dose medicament order itself can be confusing and difficult to administrate and verify. The fill process requires a number of medicaments from each individual prescription to be selected and packaged into a specific receptacle of a multi-dose medicament container, and then this must be repeated for each individual prescription that has a medicament mapped to be packaged into the same receptacle. A different combination of individual prescriptions may need to be selected and packaged for each different receptacle of the container. For a single prescription, the fill process is simple. For a multi-dose medicament order, however, the fill process may quickly become unwieldy.
For example, currently, multi-dose medicament order fills are generally prescription-based. That is, each individual prescription in the multi-dose medicament order may have a separate physical or electronic representation or record, and the entire order may typically be viewed as a combination of these prescription records. A person or other filling entity is required to decipher multiple records in order to perform steps to fill a specific receptacle of a multi-dose medicament order, and then again re-access the same multiple records to fill a different receptacle. The multiple records again must be accessed at the end of the fill for verification of each of the receptacles. Given a multitude of receptacles in a multitude of containers, the fill process may quickly become difficult to manage.
Additionally, if different parties are responsible for different steps of the fill, the multiple records must be passed along, thus increasing the chance of inadvertent omission or error. Also with multiple different parties, determining the status of progress of a multi-dose medicament fill (e.g., which prescriptions have already been filled, and which have not yet been filled, which containers have already been filled, and which have not yet been filled, etc.) may also be difficult and confusing.
Furthermore, the determination and verification of the number of different types of prescription medicaments that are packaged into a receptacle of a multi-dose medicament container may be cumbersome. Again, this information must be aggregated from multiple sources. The identification of the medicaments are typically by alphanumeric names, which are difficult to spell, remember, and match to a specific packaged medicament for verification.
Moreover, filling a multi-dose medicament order may be even more complex given the plethora of filling machines and processes in the art. These filling machines and processes range from virtually manual (e.g. pharmacist in a store-front pharmacy) to virtually automatic (e.g., high-speed, centrally located filling machines). Managing the administration and verification of a multi-dose medicament order becomes more difficult and unwieldy with the variety of different filling systems and processes.